“I’m okay. How are you?”
He stood back, scratched Coco on the neck.
“I’m good. I just got back from two weeks in Mobile, wanted to check on you.”
“What were you doing in Mobile?” she asked.
“I helped a guy rebuild the engine on his shrimp boat,” David said. “He’s gonna give me a good deal on a boat in return.”
“You’re buying a boat?” Maggie asked, surprised.
“Well, yeah. I’m not living on that houseboat just ’cause I’m cheap,” he said, almost shyly. “I’m saving up to pay cash this time.”
“That’s good, David. I’m glad, really.”
David nodded at her. “You look tired, babe. Are you sleeping?”
“Yeah. I’ve just been working a lot.”
“I heard about Gregory Boudreaux. That must have sucked.”
Maggie kept from rubbing her arms by sheer force of will.
“Yeah. Well.”
“I guess I feel sorry for the guy, but he was kind of an ass. I’ve seen him at Papa Joe’s a few times, hammered out of his mind.”
Maggie avoided saying anything else by squatting down and scratching Coco. David watched her for a minute.
“Hey,” he said quietly. She looked up at him. “I’m buying that boat.”
“You should,” she said.
“You’re trying to look encouraging, but I see you chewing on your lip.” He smiled and shrugged. “Hey, they’re gonna make pot legal, anyway.”
Maggie didn’t want to answer the question he was thinking. She knew they’d never get back together, even if he did stop running pot.
“Do you know Richard Alessi?” she asked.
“I don’t deal with meth heads, Maggie, you know that.”
“But you know who he is.”
“Yeah, I know who he is. But I told you, I don’t even hang around with the pot people. Why are you asking about Alessi?”
Maggie stood up and shrugged. “I’m just working on something.”
“He’s a freak, babe. You need to stay away from him,” David said. “And he needs to stay far away from you.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
Suddenly, she was reminded of the time they’d gone to see Silence of the Lambs, when they were in sixth grade. They were supposed to be seeing Point Break, but snuck in to the R-rated movie instead. It had scared the crap out of Maggie, but she’d refused to leave out of pride. Through all of the frightening scenes, David had tucked her face into his shoulder and put his arms around her, and it had had nothing to do with feeling her up or looking cool. She’d known then that he would always make her feel safe, that he would always be her sanctuary. She’d thought she’d known it, anyway.
An unexpected tear crept down her cheek. David stepped close and took her face in his hands, tilted it up to look at him.
“Hey.”
“I’m just tired. I need to go in,” she said.
“You’re not all by yourself, Maggie,” he said. “Wyatt’s got your back, you’ve got your folks.”
Maggie stared into his eyes, eyes she could still draw perfectly from memory, and nodded.
“And you’ve got me,” he said. “In one form or another, it’s always us. Always has been.”
Maggie put her hands on his and took them away from her face, kissed his palm and let them go.
“I know.”
David kissed her forehead.
“I love you, babe.”
“I love you, too.”
She watched him walk to his truck, Coco right on his heels. He leaned down and rubbed the dog’s neck. “Love you, Coco. Go to Mama.”
Coco ran back to Maggie, and David waved and got into his truck. Maggie turned and walked away, feeling like someone had been punching her in the chest all day long. She was pretty sure that she’d never be able to be with David again, boat or no boat, pot or no pot. But, God help her, he was still the best friend she’d ever had.
Maggie had just fallen asleep when her cell phone woke her. She reached over and picked it up, recognized the number as Grace’s.
“Grace,” she said.
“Ms. Redmond, I’m really sorry it’s so late, but this is the first chance I’ve had to call you.” Grace’s voice was hushed.
“It’s okay,” Maggie said, getting out of bed. Coco jumped down and followed her out of the room.
“They’re meeting some guys out off of Burnt Bridge Road, out there in Tate’s Hell? Ricky was talking to Joey about it over here at the house, then I heard him giving directions to somebody else on the phone.”
Maggie grabbed a notepad and pen from the counter and sat down at the kitchen table. “Okay, do you know when?”
“Eleven o’clock tomorrow night. At some old lookout tower or something the rangers use.”
Maggie scribbled on the pad.
“I didn’t hear everything he said to the guy on the phone,” Grace said. “But I know he said there was a turn-off, like an ATV trail, 1.4 miles in. I’m not sure if that was from Burnt Bridge or not, though. I never been out there.”
“Okay, Grace. I’ll find it. Do you know who’s going to be there?”
“Not exactly. I know he will, and Joey and Gary. That might have been Gary he was talking to. But the guys they’re meeting, I don’t know anything about that.”
“Okay,” Maggie said, writing it down. “Where’s Ricky now?”
“He went to get some beer.”
“Do you what they’re doing tomorrow, exactly?”
“They’re selling these guys a bunch of crystal. Guys Ricky’s never dealt with before. Ricky’s real excited, but I think he’s kind of nervous, too,” Grace said. “Joey said something about ten keys and they were talking about what they were going to buy after they paid the guys that work in the lab.”
Maggie did some quick math on the notepad. She’d been out of narcotics for five years, but she figured ten kilos was worth about six hundred thousand dollars on the market. Ricky was a wholesaler, but he was making some big money. A lot more than he was used to.
“Okay, Grace. I talked to the Assistant State’s Attorney, and he’s agreed that there’s no reason to ask you to testify or anything if this goes to court. He’s also fairly sure Richard won’t get bail this time, but you need to think of somewhere to go if he does.”
There was a long silence, with the exception of Grace’s breathing.
“Grace?”
“I’m just gonna pray they don’t give him bail.”
“Listen to me. You call me or you call 911 the minute you even think you need to, do you understand?”
“If he gets out on bail, will you know right away?”
“I’ll go to the bail hearing myself.”
“You could call me right away and tell me? I could leave the phone on that day, you know?”
“Yes.”
Maggie heard the girl take a deep breath and let it out quickly. “This is what I need to do,” she said.
“Okay. Get off the phone and stash it, okay?”
“I am.”
Maggie was going to say something reassuring, but Grace had hung up. She disconnected and speed-dialed Wyatt. He answered on the second ring.
“What’s up?” he asked groggily.
“Grace called. They’re meeting at eleven tomorrow night, out in Tate’s Hell.”
She heard a rustle of sheets or covers, and the sound of a mattress squeaking.
“Alright, I’ll call James and we’ll all sit down tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock.”
“Okay.”
There was a pause. Maggie wasn’t sure what to say to fill it.
“Everything alright with David?” Wyatt asked, saving her the trouble. She heard him trying to sound casual.
“Yeah. He just stayed a few minutes. Checking on me.”
“Well, we’ll continue that conversation soon.”
“Okay.”
“Doors locked? Freaky rooster on duty?”
M
aggie couldn’t help smiling. “Everything’s battened down, as usual.”
“Good. Then get some sleep.”
“Goodnight, Sheriff.”
“Goodnight, Lieutenant.”
Everyone was piled into the conference room at the Sheriff’s Department. Wyatt stood at one end of the long table, flanked by James from narcotics, and Frank Pittman, captain of the SWAT team.
Standing along both sides of the table with Maggie were five deputies from Narcotics, two SWAT guys, and four other deputies who just happened to be scheduled for duty later that night.
Capt. Pittman unrolled a large map, laid it down in front of Wyatt, and took out a pen.
“Here’s the old ranger station here,” he said, using the pen as a pointer. “It’s no longer in use. Really more of a lookout than a station, not much bigger than a good deer stand. It’s the only one even remotely close, according to the directions you got from your contact, so we’re saying this is it.”
He dragged the pen along a barely visible line that ran north and south a few hundred yards from the ranger station. “Right here, we’ve got an ATV trail that’s currently closed because of downed trees. Access is from this road over here, about a quarter mile from the target location. I believe the trail your target’s supposed to use is the one on the other side of the lookout. As you can see, it’s right off Burnt Bridge Road, and you run about five hundred yards before you get to the location.”
“So are we going in via this closed trail, then?” Wyatt asked.
“That’s what I’m thinking, Sheriff. It means circling around the long way from town, but the likelihood of being spotted is minimal, I think.”
Wyatt leaned over and peered at the map. There were a few trees penciled in to indicate woods between the closed trail and the lookout.
“What kind of cover are we going to get from these woods here?”
“None, unless you’re sending some toddlers in. This is all new growth scrub pines, some no bigger around than my arm,” Pittman said. “Most of these losers are totally fried in the head, but these guys actually picked a pretty decent spot. Very little cover, not a widely used area, and the lookout’s called a lookout for a reason. It’s on stilts, approximately twelve feet high. Good visibility all the way around, with a window here and one on the opposite wall here.”
“So how are we working this, then?” Wyatt asked.
Pittman pointed at two of the SWAT guys, both young men. “Lewis and Darnell are going to head up Team B, which’ll be in position on either side of the entrance to the trail. Here,” he said, pointing with his pen. “We’ve got decent underbrush, bushes and whatnot on either side of the road. They’ll be able to see any vehicles coming through, or anyone on foot for that matter. They’ll let us know when the subjects pass, but they’ll wait on our signal to start moving into position.”
He pointed at two of the other SWAT guys at the table.
“Parker and Woodall will be with us on the closed trail. They’ll belly-crawl it from the trail to the ranger station. Once Team B is in place, Parker and Woodall fire 38mm long range tear gas rounds through both windows. That allows the rest of us to move in from the trail on this side, while Team B moves in on theirs.”
“Okay. What time is sunset tonight, anybody know?”
“Twenty-forty hours,” Darnell piped up.
“Alright, it’s almost three. Let’s meet back here at six with the whole team. That work for you, Captain?”
“It works.”
“Okay, guys.” Wayne pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Let’s not do anything the Hardy Boys wouldn’t do.”
At 11:02 that night, Maggie knelt at the base of a scrub pine on the closed ATV trail. Mosquitos squealed in her ears like radio-controlled helicopters and she’d given up on trying to wipe them from her neck. She wore a black Sheriff’s Office windbreaker, and beneath that a department polo shirt, and beneath that her black body armor. The air was thick enough with moisture to make it hard to breathe. Her left ear itched continuously from the Earhugger ear piece attached to her shoulder mic.
She was almost certain she was going to lose her mind from the heat, the bugs, the itching, and the rivulets of sweat that ran down her spine. Adrenaline made it impossible to ignore anything.
She and four other deputies were squatting or kneeling in a line behind Wyatt, James, the SWAT guys and Captain Pittman, who were squatting or kneeling in their own line. It was completely black outside, the moon overwhelmed by storm clouds that promised rain at any moment.
No one spoke. Sound carried in funny ways across this flat land and radio comm was limited to Captain Pittman, Wyatt, and the leader of the team across the field. At 10:55, he’d let them know that a car with three people inside had passed them, headed for the lookout. They could see the headlights as it pulled in. Five minutes earlier, they got word that a second car had passed, this one carrying two people.
They could hear car doors closing and the faint sound of boots on wood as the visitors made their way up the ramp to the lookout, then the creak of a seldom-used door.
Darnell and Parker had started on their crawl for the structure as soon as the door shut again.
Now they waited. Maggie could barely make out Wyatt and the other officers. They were just blotches of black ink on a black piece of paper. Sweat dripped into her eyes, and as she blinked the salt away, they heard the distinctive, hollow pop pop, almost imperceptible as two separate shots, as Darnell and Parker fired the tear gas rounds through the windows.
“SWAT, go!” Maggie heard Pittman snap in her earpiece, and Pittman and his men rushed the field. She pulled her .45 from her holster and got ready. Twenty seconds later came Wyatt’s command and Maggie jumped up, her thigh muscles protesting, and she, Wyatt, and the rest of the deputies started running.
Maggie heard nothing but boots thudding the ground for a few seconds as they ran, then she heard the wooden door slam open, and a lot of feet on wood. A few seconds later she could hear the SWAT members up ahead yelling “Hands on your head!” and “Face down, face down!”
By the time she, Wyatt and her fellow deputies arrived at the lookout, the SWAT guys had five men on the ground. Near one of them was a backpack that had fallen open. Two stacks of bills had spilled onto the ground.
Within thirty seconds, the SWAT guys had disarmed and handcuffed all five men. Maggie holstered her weapon and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as the men were jerked to their feet.
None of them was Richard Alessi.
Four hours later, Maggie sagged against the wall in the small room that was connected by a one-way glass window to one of their two interrogation rooms. James and one of his deputies were still interviewing the second of the two buyers out of Gainesville in Room 1. Wyatt had gotten fed up with Joey Truman, who “didn’t know nothin’,” especially when asked about Alessi.
Now he sat across from Gary Barone, who had been holding the only meth at the scene, barely more than three grams. They’d been in there for almost an hour, with little to show for it.
Maggie watched as Wyatt slapped a file shut and raised a hand to the deputy at the door.
Wyatt got up, stretched his legs, and walked out, as the deputy moved to escort Barone back to his cell. A moment later, Wyatt walked into the dark observation room and shut the door.
Maggie watched him as he rubbed his eyes and sighed. Then he slapped the file against his thigh for a moment as he stared at the floor. Finally, he looked up at Maggie.
“We got nothin’,” he said. “We can charge Barone for possession with intent. It’s not much, but it’ll send him back inside for a year or so. Joey, he’s dumber than hell, but even he knows he doesn’t need to help us out on Alessi. We’ll charge him with accessory to a bad guy and he’ll be out on probation. The little creep has two priors as a juvenile and that’s it.”
Maggie nodded and folded her arms across her chest.
“No Alessi. No ten kilos,” Wyatt said.
; Maggie shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Well, unless Alessi’s cooking meth that can give you superpowers, I doubt these guys from Gainesville were there to pay $200,000 for three grams,” Wyatt said.
“He was somewhere out there, with the rest of the stuff,” Maggie said. “Barone and Joey give these guys a taste, and they call Alessi to tell him the money’s there.”
“Not a bad plan, really.”
“Now he’s in the wind and I don’t know. I don’t know about Grace.”
Wyatt nodded and fidgeted with his mustache a minute.
“I think we should let Joey go,” Maggie said.
Wyatt looked over at her.
“Pretty cold.”
“Yeah. But she doesn’t have a plan B. We’re supposed to have him in custody,” Maggie said. “Now he knows somebody talked to us and I can’t call her. I can’t go over there. I can’t even warn her that he’ll probably walk right back through the front door.”
“He already did,” Wyatt said. “An hour ago. It’s been quiet since.”
“We need to go over there.”
“Not you. You don’t, Maggie.” Wyatt pointed at her. “You show up, and he just might put you and Grace and the Piggly-Wiggly together.”
“Send James, then,” she said.
“I am. We’re letting him give this guy Rolfe another go first. Right now, Grace’s best bet is if Ricky thinks maybe one of these buyers is his problem.”
“Or we let Joey go.”
Wyatt stared at the empty interview room a moment.
“I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. But I don’t know that Patrick Boudreaux will go for it.”
“Patrick Boudreaux works as little as possible and he couldn’t care less about some small time wing man,” Maggie said. “That won’t get his face in the paper.”
“Well, lawyers are on the way for the out-of-towners and Barone. Truman’s gonna be sitting here till a PD shows up in the morning, anyway. I’ll talk to Boudreaux first thing in the morning.”
Late in the afternoon, Maggie sat at the computer in her office, finishing up her report on Barone and Truman. Barone had been remanded without bail due to his parole violation. The Public Defender couldn’t have cared less whether they released Joey and neither could Boudreaux, so the paperwork was underway.
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